Sally - Sally

POOR Ally McCoist - he waits all that time for the top job - and within two real games, his old "Sally" McCoist nickname is back. Indeed, the way his tenure in the grand office, at the head of the marble staircase has begun - one can almost imagine him gazing at the portraits of Messrs Wilton, Struth, Symon, White, Waddell, Wallace, Greig, Souness, Smith, Advocaat, McLeish and Le Guen and asking: "Why me?"

Of course, as he has admitted, his timing hasn't been right - better to have inherited with the club at a low ebb, rather than on the back of Walter Smith's three-in-a-row run of titles, garnered at a time of fiscal difficulty; but, like Tommy Burns across the city before him, he wasn't going to knock-back the job just because the time was not absolutely correct.

Football at the top level today is, more than ever, a results-driven industry - and nowhere more-so than when these results impact on the game's oldest rivalry, that between Celtic and Rangers. Once upon a time, an assistant manager, taking over either of the Glasgow jobs, would be given a breathing space, to grow into the job; the rival fans would have been prepared to accept a season or two of playing second fiddle, before growing restless. Not today.

McCoist is the fifth Rangers' assistant manager to be promoted to the big job. None of the previous four was required to deliver silverware immediately to the extent McCoist is.

The great Bill Struth, on succeeding the dead William Wilton, at least took over a title-winning side, one which had started to make Rangers, rather than Celtic, the dominant force in the city. When Struth took over, Celtic had won 15 SFL titles to Rangers' 10, although Wilton had delivered two out of the last three.

When the octogenarian Struth was ushered out of the front door at Ibrox 34 years later, the league titles tally read Rangers 28 Celtic 20, with Rangers having added a further seven unofficial wartime titles.

David White, the next number two to become number one was appointed in successon to the shamefully sacked Scot Symon at a time of turmoil, as across the city Jock Stein swung the balance of power back Celtic's way. He never really stood a chance against that managerial genius, and the carping from the sidelines of his ultimate successor, Willie Waddell, then a hugely-influential sports writer, undid him from the start, as the Deedle dubbed him: "the boy David".

Waddell had at least restored some equilibrium before handing over to his assistant, Jock Wallace, who benefitted from Stein's declining powers after his car crash to deliver a treble.

Then came Smith's succession to Graeme Souness, which kept an already rolling juggernaut progressing to nine-in-a-row.

So with three successful managerial hand-overs to one failure, Rangers, when appointing from within, have generally got it right. Another "failure" is therefore probably due.

Rangers are an institution, and there is an argument for appointing a manager who at least knows how that institution works. Struth, Symon, Waddell, Wallace and Greig all got the top job after many years within the club, while Symon and Wallace had earned their managerial spurs with trophies at lesser clubs. Smith and McLeish were fans, who, again, had learned the managment business elsewhere, while Souness led nothing less than a revolution in Scottish football. White had barely got to know the place after arriving from Clyde and there is anectdotal evidence that Symon didn't really want him there in the first place, although he had shown signs of managerial talent at Shawfield.

Advocaat and the ill-fated Le Guen were an attempt at bringing continental sophistication to Scotland, with contrasting fortunes - maybe we're simply not programmed for frites with mayonaisse or French cuisine up here.

So to McCoist. Almost certainly he would have benefitted from a spell as manager somewhere like Kilmarnock or Motherwell - to learn the ropes; but neither club is remotely a Rangers. Maybe the guarantee of Sir David Murray's continued support from the chair would have eased him through the first stressful months - but here he is, flung-in, to sink and swim and with a shiny new owner hovering above him, anxious to show his take-over of the club will be good for Rangers.

I do not envy McCoist his job, he is already under enormous pressure, after a less than stellar start. But, after he arrived at the club from Sunderland, and again when Souness benched him in favour of the Hateley/Johnson strike partnership, it seemed unlikely that Alistair would ever supercede Bob McPhail as the club's greatest goal scorer - but he did. So I would not rush to write-off Ally in the wake of a home draw to Hearts and a one-goal loss to Malmo.

That said, however, with a city financier in charge - creatures notorious for their short-termism, Alistair does not have long to turn things around.

The likes of Struth and Symon were used to seeing their sides struggle through August and September, but still deliver trophies in April and May - McCoist will not be given that amount of time, and while Rangers are still likely to be parading silverware round Ibrox come May, 2012 - unless things pick-up soon, it may not be McCoist who is gathering the managerial plaudits for any such success.

Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush

WELL, here we are, one round of fixtures into the new SPL season and already some are ready to package-up the season 2011-2012 SPL trophy and league flag and despatch them to Celtic Park; simply because Rangers were held to a home draw by the club which finished third last season, while Celtic beat last season's tenth-best SPL club on their own ground.

This flies right in the face of reality - winning a league flag is a marathon, not a sprint and has been shown in the past, being two points ahead even going into the final game of a season is not a guarantee of eventual title success.

I reckon gloating from Celtic fans and wailing and gnashing of teeth from the Ibrox faithful, this early in the campaign, is simply further proof of how hysterical the age-old Old Firm rivalry has become.

Of course, we are still in mid-summer, Strathclyde Fire and Rescue should be asked to send a couple of pumps along to the next games at Ibrox and Celtic Parks to hose the fans down before they get too-over-excited.

As of now (lunch time on Monday, 25 July, 2011) just about all I can guarantee about season 2011-2012 is that, come the final final whistle next May, the league order will not be what it is right now: Motherwell, Celtic, Dundee United, Hearts, Kilmarnock, Rangers, Aberdeen, St Johnstone, Dunfermline Athletic, St Mirren, Hibs, Inverness CT.

THERE has been much comment about Craig Whyte's decision to unfurl the 2010-11 league flag on Saturday. Well, in terms of Rangers: it's his ball and he can do what he likes with it. On one hand, he got out there and showed his face to the faithful, on the other, since he played no part in winning it, it might perhaps have been better had he asked Davie Weir, the winning captain, or perhaps an Ibrox legend such as John Greig, or Eric Caldow or Derek Johnstone - to pluck three names out of mid-air, to do the honours.

I NOTE also, on some of the newspaper websites that the mutual game of tit-for-tat between the Old Firm fans, has started. There have been sharp-eared Celtic fans hearing sectarian singing during broadcasts from Ibrox on Saturday, while Rangers fans with equally-keen hearing could discern pro-IRA chanting and singing from Easter Road on Sunday. It's all becoming tedious. But will the clubs actually do something about it? Not until a (proverbial) gun is held to their heads - you see - sectarianism sells, always has, always will - until somebody REALLY does something about it. But, don't hold your breath.

THERE is - believe it or not - life outwith the Old Firm and Saturday's Ramsden's Cup (great sponsorship by the way - in the SFL any gold or silver hanging around is clearly very old and superfluous to modern living) threw-up some interesting results.

Good to see Ayr United knocking-out holders Queen of the South at the first hurdle. Brian Reid, encouraged by a chairman and board who did not jettison him after relegation two seasons ago, is rebuilding his United side and between the experience of the likes of John Robertson, Martyn Campbell and the ageless Mark Roberts and the products of a somewhat under-rated Youth Academy, he has a real chance of keeping the part-timers in a First Division which is far from vintage this season.

I just wonder when Reid will start to be mentioned once the SPL managerial merry-go-round cranks-up. He would, I venture, be worth a punt to a middling SPL club seeking a manager who could work with little cash. For Queens - I predict a season-long struggle.

GREAT to see Spartans open their new ground with a match against a Manchester United XI on Sunday. OK, it wasn't the result they'd have wanted, but here is a prototype "community Club" which deserves to and surely will, once we get a proper pyramid in place, be an SFL club.

With their reliance on graduates of Edinburgh University, Spartans' teams havde something other sides in Scotland lack - players with brains in their heads, and that should give them an advantage.

I see the club becoming a Queen's Park of the east and it will be great to see them in the SFL, when it happens.

The Goal Posts Are Moving

TODAY, for Scotland's full-time footballers, the realisation will start to sink in. Their training session will be slightly different, a change of emphasis will be evident, because, in 24-hours' time the season will kick-off for real. It will matter, if only in terms of the effect on their wage packet, how they perform; win bonuses will now be there to be won, league position will determine the perception of the fans, expectation will have to be turned into realisation.

The transfer window will remain open for a further five and a bit weeks, so there will be some movement around squads and those players who do not hit the ground running might find there security, if there is such a thing in present-day football, threatened. But, while long gone are the days of free movement within an all-year-round transfer market, things are also changing in Scotland, as regards the two big players in that market - the Old Firm.

Rangers' capture yesterday of Hearts' Lee Wallace was a move we've grown accustomed to over the 140 years of Scottish football. In the early days, Queen's Park was the destination of choice of the provincial player who had perhaps gained the recognition of the SFA's selection committee, and who now wished to play, week-in, week-out, with better-quality team mates. But, with the advent of the Scottish League and professionalism, Queen's, for all their great pionerring work, became something of a sideshow, the places to go were Ibrox and Celtic Park, and that has continued ever since.

Anyone's all-time Rangers XI would contain more bought-in than home-grown players. During the Struth Years, from 1920 to 1954, the period when the Ibrox club established itself as THE leading Scottish team there was a steady stream of recruits from lesser sides - Airdrie gave them Bob McPhail and Jock 'Tiger' Shaw; from Queen's Park came Bobby Brown, Ian McColl, Willie Woodburn and Sammy Cox of the original 1949 Treble winners. From the great team of the early 1960s, the next Treble winners - Bobby Shearer came from Hamilton Accies, the peerless Jim Baxter from Raith Rovers, Ian McMillan was another stolen from Airdrie and on and on the recruitment from other Scottish clubs went.

Andy Goram from Hibs, Davie Cooper from Clydebank, Ally McCoist from St Johnstone via Sunderland, Alex Macdonald, also from the Perth Saints, George McLean, Tottie Beck, Bobby McKean, Ian Ferguson and Kirk Broadfoot from the Paisley Saints, Ian Redford and Richard Gough (via Tottenham) from Dundee United, Colin Stein, Craig Paterson and now Steven Whittaker from Hibs; Alan McLaren and now Lee Wallace from Hearts.

But, Wallace's arrival may be one of the last such moves - although I wouldn't rule out Rangers' interest in St Johnstone's Murray Davidson bearing fruit in this transfer window - because, Rangers are now under new ownership. I do not see Craig Whyte embarking on the free-spending of the Murray/Souness era, or backing European recruitment raids as per the Advocaat years.

In fact, with Gordon Smith, a man who has always espoused coaching and home-grown youth development as the way forward as Director of Football, I can see Rangers, who have already done well out of the facility, seeking to recruitment of new players increasingly from within the confines of Murray Park. It will be some time in the future, indeed, if ever, before Murray Park is spoken off in the same hushed tones as Manchester United's Cliff and now Carrington training grounds, or the famed Barcelona Academy, but, over the Whyte years, it will increasingly influence the make-up of Rangers' teams.

Why do I say this? Simple, Mr Whyte may be a Rangers fan of long-standing, but he is also a venture capitalist and such creatures look to develop clubs at minimum cost, seeking maximum return. If Mr Whyte can see one Danny Wilson and maybe one Gordon Wylde per season emerge from Murray Park, he will be delighted. He could then sell one on for a big fee to an EPL team and keep the other; Rangers' squad will become deeper, the team will improve in Europe and who knows, there may be another European trophy to be won somewhere down the line.

A viable production line out of Murray Park will enable Rangers to keep winning in Scotland, get better in Europe, without huge spending on salaries. Certainly, there will still be incursions into the transfer market - which will at least keep my colleagues on the red tops in work over the summer, peddling their fantasies, but I see, increasingly, Rangers becoming a developing and selling club rather than a buying one. And, if, as I believe it will, this strategy works - you can bet on Celtic following suit. The goal posts are moving

Wildlife on SPL

THE warm-ups are almost over: the clock is ticking and it will soon be Saturday and the big kick-off, happy days - or are they?

I try to steer clear of Old Firm politics, it is a shameful swamp, an oozing plook on the admttedly less than wholesome countenance of Scottish football. But, needs must, so here goes.

Defending the habit of a section of the Rangers' support - of singing "unsuitable" songs may be a case of defending the indefinsible. Certainly any right-thinking person would rather they didn't sing their old battle anthems, but, one man's sectarian ditty is another's traditional folk song. As I have argued before in mixed company - ie catholic/protestant - The Fields of Athenry and The Sash are both Irish folk songs, so how come one is apparently ok but not the other - and in any case, what has either song got to do with Scottish football? Ditto Derry's Walls or The Boys of the Old Brigade or perhaps a couple of dozen more staples of the Old Firm's combined song book.

The fact that, in the 11th year of the third millennium, in a supposedly civilised and advanced country in Europe, the religious and political battles of two or three hundred years ago are still being sung-of as a means of winding-up opponents speaks volumes on how little we have advanced in that time.

Rangers are now paying the price for someone's decision almost 100 years ago, to pander to the sectarianism of a section of the populace of West-Central Scotland, while Celtic's pandering to similar sectarianism on the other side of the religious divide for even longer continues to deny them the respect that club deserves from its achievements on the field.

Let there be no doubt, sectarianism sells - for both clubs and any whitabootery or tit-for-tat dredging-up of past indiscretions merely demonstrates the backwardness of those doing the dragging-up.

Celtic have apparently siezed the moral high ground - more sinned-against than sinning; a situation which perhaps owes more to having better-placed friends in the media and politics than Rangers. To be fair to Rangers, like many a long-lasting "establishment institution", there is perhaps an element of: "Never apologise - never explain" about their pr and media stance and I would suggest to new owner Craig Whyte that a review of his club's approach to public relations and news management might pay dividends.

That club ought to be more pro-active in weeding-out the cancerous core who, regardless of the fines, bans and other impositions placed on the club by UEFA or others, seem hell-bent on taking the Briton's right of free speech to extremes. I despair of their constant add-ons to their songs, regarding the Pope, but, nobody can deny - they do have a right to express these sentiments.

Similarly, I despair of those Celtic fans who voice their support for a terrorist organisation, or who on a weekly basis slander HM the Queen, but, as with their similarly-thick cousins on the other side of the city - they do have a right to express these sentiments.

The Scottish Government and the Police are on the case - I might suggest the government ought to be looking at sectarianism and bigotry in the wider community, beyond football - perhaps, on one hand telling the Orange Order: "You can no longer walk the Queen's highway" and on the other telling the Roman Catholic Church: "We will run the schools and if you want to have your own ones - then pay for them yourself". It might take a century or ten, but, eventually, religious tolerance and free speech will abound in Scotland.

By the way I am not advocating the closure of "Catholic" schools. We have too-many schools in Scotland for today's population and I can see no case for what happens in the Ayrshire village where I live, whereby Roman Catholic children are, on a daily basis, bussed out of their home village - six miles to the next big town for their Primary education (passing four non-denominational schools) and then 22 miles, past four large comprehensives to the even bigger town which has the nearest RC secondary school. Better they be educated alongside the other children in the village from age five to 16 or 18.

But, to get back to football. Both Old Firm clubs MUST become pro-active in cutting-out the cancer. Start with the official supporters clubs; tell them, you self-police - or else. Then, when that body of fans has been sorted, you can more-easily sort-out the freelancers.

Be heavy with the season ticket holders, adopt a three strikes and you are out policy. If someone has coughed-up several hundred £ sterling for a season ticket and by singing the wrong song at the wrong time, has to forfeit that ticket and investment for perhaps a period which includes a European game - he will surely not be so-happy to try it a second time. If he does, he gets a longer ban, and if he still will not come to heel - he gets banned for life. It will work, I am sure.

And, while the clubs are at it - they ought to publish the banned lists in their club publications. I am certain the combination of naming and shaming, plus the financial hit, will work.

Deck's Cleared For Action Cap'n

THE Open is out of the way - and I defy anyone not to rejoice at big Darren Clarke's success, at long last; so now we can clear the decks for the start of the football season.

Of course, Dundee United are already in European action and can I, at this point, get rid of an issue raised by friend of this blog Sausage Fingers - perhaps the only Arab in the USA who doesn't have his own personal FBI agent looking after him. Following my last post, SF asked me for my views on whether or not to support every Scottish club playing in Europe, even my club's deadliest rivals.

I tend towards the pragmatic Scottish view - you support EVERY Scottish club playing in Europe, regardless; then, if and when THEY come a cropper, you indulge in high-intensity and non-stop piss-taking - simples.

With the rise of the national co-efficient, we are now all in Europe together and we have to be hopeful of long campaigns for every Scottish team, even those we cannot otherwise stand.

I WAS at Rugby Park on Saturday to run my eye over Kenny Shiels's new-look Killie. On walking away from Rugby Park I came up alongside two long-time Killie fans of my acquaintance and asked them what they thought.

"I'm worried", said one.

"It's all going too-well - unbeaten in three games in Ireland, then we come back and play some good stuff this afternoon - I have bother handling promising pre-seasons, it builds an expectation we seldom live up to".

Killie will certainly, this season, try to play something like an old-fashioned Scottish passing game, there were few if any long balls on Saturday and the players seemed comfortable in possession. The same might be said of the St Mirren team I saw out-play then lose to Ayr United the previous Saturday.

Of course, strange things happen in the heat of real battle, rather than the phoney war of pre-season, but, if these standards of short balls, along the carpet, can be maintained, we might just see a half-decent season.

I DON'T know who is driving the story, the player, his agent or "Mad Vlad", but, just as Andy Webster broke the mould to get out of Hearts - and let's be honest, that didn't exactly go to plan in the longer run - maybe Lee Wallace staying at Tynecastle through the final year of his contract, will be the first (or second) crack in football's infatuation with a transfer market.

I don't know all the ins and outs, but in the North American professional sports market, the place which is the true home of the millionaire sportsman, basketball and (American) footballers in the final year of a contract have a greater say in their future than their counterparts in European football.

They also have agents who are perhaps sharper than their European counterparts and better-able to secure lucrative deals for their clients.

Better perhaps for Wallace to run down his Hearts contract, have his agent play hard-ball with Vlad from January and end up with he (Wallace) getting a better wage deal with a new club as a Bosman than through a final year transfer. With no fee to pay, his new club can pey him a better salary.

I see such deals becoming more-prevalant, as the players finally waken-up to the fact that these days, they hold the power - not their clubs.

All it takes is hard-headedness. Look at dear Bobo Balde, who took the money then sauntered away from Celtic.

I Hear The Sound Of Distant Drums

OK, WE all know that in this week of July, the sound of drums in Scotland are usually of instruments of the Lambeg variety; but elsewhere the snare drums are beating, calling the combatants to arms, with competitive football kicking off with Dundee United in European action in Poland tonight, before on Saturday, come the first SFL Challenge Cup games.

These Saturday games might only involve the "diddy" teams, but they will at least deflect some attention from the Open Golf and further enhance the realisation that the real stuff is just around the corner - if the often-dire SPL matches are indeed the real thing.

I am none too confident about what this new season will bring - but forward tho I canna see, I guess and fear is almost the default position of the Scottish football fan in July.

Have we addressed the institutionalised bias in favour of the two large Glasgow clubs?

Have we seriously addressed the lack of skill in our domestic game?

Are too many of our clubs still living way beyond their means?

Is our league system of two separate organisations still fit for purpose?

Does that system meet the needs and aspirations of the football public?

All these questions - to which we are still getting the "wrong" answers. I say again: We're awe doomed.

Then there is the sectarian question - which I can never see answered in my lifetime.

As to the question of Scotland qualifying for Euro' 2012 - I am not at all confident. We are now in the situation where, to qualify, Craig Levein and his men simply cannot afford to drop another point, prior to "mission impossible" against Spain in the final game. Can you see this happening? Thought so, me neither.

This almost-inevitable failure will set-off another round of public flagellation, calls for a sacrificial victim - then we will carry-on as before - it's the Scottish football way and I don't see any change soon.

That's why, I wish, for once, those drums calling us to arms for the new season would also call us to arms to actually change a flawed football culture which is leading us to nowhere other than oblivion.

Good luck to United tonight, however - we badly need one of the provincial teams to make a greater impact in Europe.

A Gordon For Me

IF I have a criticism of the Old Firm's management - other than the permanent one of these two organisations not doing enough to stamp out sectarianism and bigotry in Scottish football, it is that they simply do not do enough to promote and encourage young Scottish talent.

Given the breadth of their support throughout Scotland and into Ireland, they have the pick of our best young talent - yet, over the past 20 years the numbers of young players who have come through the ranks at the two major clubs is distressingly small.

Today, thanks in no small part to the financial restrictions imposed on them by their bankers over the past three years - a prudence which I can see continuing on Craig Whyte's watch, Rangers have been forced, reluctantly, to promote from within and this has seen the likes of Fleck, Hutton, Ness and Wylde and to a lesser extent Cole and McMillan, given places in the first team squad.

In the same period Celtic have continued to largely shop in Aldi and Lidl, with only the excellent James Forrest demonstrating to the younger players around Lennoxtown that yes, you can wear a first team jersey.

I have never registered with the: "The Lisbon Lions will never happen again" school of thought, so prevalent in Scotland.

For the first century of football, Scotland was where the embitious English League sides shopped - we have now largely lost that market, hopefully our new Dutch Performance Director's initiatives will help restore that market to us, as well as leading our domestic game to a new dawn of European respect.

But, to today's tale. I see that Craig Gordon, one young, home-grown, world-class Scottish product is available for transfer at his current club, Sunderland. Of course, if the reported interest from Arsenal and Manchester City is more than "paper talk", then Master Gordon and his advisers would be fools to ignore these overtures. He's as good, if not a better goalkeeper than Joe Hart and he is certainly better than anybody at the Emirates, so, given these two clubs could certainly meet and indeed exceed his current level of remuneration - he has to be interested.

However, should the reported interest from the upper reaches of the EPL be silly season rumour, then Celtic's advances ought to be listened to. A move back home would be a good fit for both: he's a quality keeper, well capable of being worth the 12-15 points season which his international rival reportedly keeps at Rangers. Gordon is definitely "Celtic Class", unlikely to be dragged down by the mental demands of being the last line for a team for whose fans victory is expected every week.

He's international class, unlikely to be attacked by nerves in the big domestic games or in Europe - he's a good fit, apart from those English-level wages. However, should Celtic bite the bullet and go after him, he could be as fine a servant for them as another Scottish goalkeeper who played for a club in Edinburgh and one in the North East of England, before arriving at Celtic Park - and Ronnie Simpson didn't do too-badly, did he?

ACCORDING to the Daily Torygraph, shock, horror!!! the European Union is going to push through a bill whereby every international team of every member state of the EU will have to wear the EU flag on their shirts and fly it during games.

Great idea, why doesn't Wee Eck, who rarely misses a travelling bandwagon, climb aboard and insist that that cute blue number with the 12 stars be the only flag flown at Old Firm games - ok, the Celtic fans will not be best pleased with the background colour, but, I reckon, since that flag has meant the farmers of Belgium and Eastern France have been able to enjoy more than 60 years of uninterrupted harvests, while true self-determination and international harmony has come to large swathes of Central Europe, maybe in about 2000 years, peace will descend on the football fields of west-central Scotland. It's surely worth a try.

Stair Heid Rows

SCOTTISH Football is something of a big village, within which there are numerous wee local areas. At either end there are the big hooses, within which dwell the super rich Celtic and Rangers families, with the various levels of local populace ranged between them.

In that part of the village known as "Ayrshire", there are a couple of wee stushies going on at present, and in one case, things are getting nasty - with the Ayr United and Kilmarnock "families" falling-out over a little local nick-nack, the Ayrshire Cup, over which they had battled for over a century, before the authorities stepped in and banned them from disputing ownership.

This caused great offence to the lesser members of the Ayr and Kilmarnock families - known as "fans" and since the annual dispute was halted, the fans on both sides have sought to bring back the annual little local battle.

The politics are complicated, the Ayrshire Cup used to be organised by the Ayrshire FA, but some years ago this organisation became part of a new body, the West of Scotland FA, and the Ayrshrie Cup went into abeyance, as did the Renfrewshire and Lanarkshire Cups. The Renfrewshire Cup has since been revived, now moves are afoot to revive the Ayrshire one.

To help make this revival happen, Ayr and Kilmarnock were due to face each other in a pre-season game; the hope being, if it passed without major riots in the douce upmarket street of Kilmarnock around Rugby Park, then maybe the Cup could again be up for grabs.

Meanwhile, Killie came up with sponsorship so that the winners of the proposed pre-season game could take away a bauble known as "The Ayrshire Challenge Cup". but for some reason this didn't sit well with Ayr's American-based owner/chairman Lachlan Cameron, who has now called-off the pre-season game.

Naturally this has caused a degree of posturing and name calling from both sides, but it means - Kilmarnock will not be entertaining Ayr United pre-season. The biggest losers here are the fans - who don't really care if the sides are playing for the real Ayrshire Cup, a pretend Ayrshire Challenge Cup, a tea cup out of the players' lounge or even the European Cup.

For them, it's US v THEM, what the game is about doesn't matter. It is all about bragging right and the feel-good factor and no game is a loss to both sides.

AS an aside here - can I just say, a real chance was lost when the West of Scotland FA was formed. The Junior West of Scotland Cup is the number two competition in the Junior ranks, behind only the Emirates Scottish Junior Cup. With Kilmarnock, St Mirren, Motherwell, Hamilton, Airdrie United, Ayr United, Clyde, Partick Thistle, Morton, Dumbarton, Albion Rovers, Queen's Park and a couple of other clubs who could maybe be persuaded to enter their Under-19 teams, a senior West of Scotland Cup - perhaps with the teams forced to field all-Scottish sides, could be a positive addition to the Scottish season - failing that, bring back all the old County Cups.

THE second little local difficulty in Scottish football concerns moves to integrate the Junior Ayrshire and Central District Leagues more fully into the West of Scotland Regional Leagues.

This goes against all sense. In the East Region, which admittedly does cover a larger geographic area than the West Region, there are, below East Superleague level, Lothians, Tayside and two other regional leagues. This makes sense, as it preserves the local rivalries which are so-important to the smaller junior sides.

In the West, the likes of Auchinleck, Arthurlie, Pollok, Irvine Meadow, Petershill and Cumnock have the support and resources to cope with playing right across the West of Scotland. Small village teams such as Forth Wanderers, Royal Albert, Muirkirk, Craigmark and Lugar Boswell cannot afford to finance travel across the same region. Keep them local and let them survive and if not flourish, continue to produce young players for the bigger teams.

Scottish rugby has just decided to become more local, below the top semi-professional level, there is no sense in junior football bucking this trend, particularly in these days of austerity and financial doom and gloom.

The Times Are Definitely Changing

WHEN I was a boy, this would be one of the few weeks in the year when my spare time wasn't spent on my ultimately futile quest to master a football. Back then, for the week after Wimbledon, my mates and I strung a rope between the two trees which were sufficiently far apart to provide us with the permanent goals for our football pitch, in the "big hoose" grounds.

This was our own Centre Court, where we pretended to be Lew Hoad, Ken Rosewall and the other then Wimbledon heroes. This infatuation with racquet, tennis balls and Dunlop Green Flashes only lasted for a couple of weeks, however, before we switched again, digging holes and putting up brush handles as flags on the adjacent field, to become Peter Thompson, Bobby Locke, Gary Player - and later Arnold Palmer, as the Open golf caght our eye.

Two weeks later and it was back to Maverick, and the re-start of the football season.

But, today, football is an all-year-round obsession and while the major newspapers do try to big-up Wimbledon: well they have all these heavy expenses claims of the major sports writers to justify - they are wasting their time. Today, football is the only game in town.

And in Scotland, it is definitely a game on the wane. After the new broom swept through the SFA's annual meeting, I had hoped for genuine debate on where we are going, here in the heartland of the game. My hopes have been dashed, during the off-season, when there is perhaps the best opportunity for considering where we are and where we are going - what has been exercising the minds of the game's intellectual giants, the on-line congregation? Ach, just the usual, tit-for-tat examples of "whitabootery" by the usual suspects with their 24-hour, seven-days-a-week, 52-weeks-per-year devotion to one or other half of the Bigot Sisters.

I say sisters, because, to listen to the fans is like hearing a stuck in the groove recording of "Sisters" by the Beverley Sisters.

They really are like two baldie men scrapping over a comb.

But, thanks to Craig Whyte, I think the times are indeed changing. Being a venture capitalist, the new Honcho at Ibrox is canny wi his bawbees. SDM would surely by now have met Dundee United's valuation of David Goodwillie - Whyte is not so ready to splash the cash, and not merely because there is a risk Master Goodwillie might spend most of this season, and perhaps a few more, as a guest of Her Majesty.

Celtic, with the legacy of the Kelly Kids and the Quality Street Gang - a legacy albeit which has become somewhat tarnished in recent seasons, was once the team which specialised in home-grown talent, this specialisation fuelled in part by the dream of every janitor and every teacher in charge of football at every RC school in west-central Scotland to be, the man who discovered the next Jinky or Kenny.

Today, those young Celts who have dominated the SPL Under-19 league of late find themselves shown the door immediately they turn 20, while across at Murray Park, the kids are being introduced into the first team squad, as Rangers suddenly realise you don't have to spend the mint to prosper domestically and even if the Champions League knock-out stages are an infrequent jaunt, there is still money to be made in the Europa League.

Celtic and to a lesser degree Hearts, might still shop in Aldi - I fancy Rangers' self-sufficiency and husbanding of locally-sourced raw materials might bring them in the longer run, genuine stars on their strip, rather than their own kidding nobody five stars - one for every ten Scottish titles.